STEM Educators Gain Real-World Experience
By Gabrielle Fimbres
Peering through a pair of safety
goggles, Tracie Van Ert inspects particulates that fluoresce brilliantly as she
determines the most effective way of
cleaning telescopes at Raytheon Missile Systems, aided by a robot.
For this Tucson Unified School District teacher, this is more than just a
summer job. Van Ert is learning valuable industry skills in Raytheon’s fusion innovation lab to take back to her
students.
Van Ert is one of 38 educators who
are part of Teachers in Industry, a program of Tucson Values Teachers and
the University of Arizona. She was
among seven teachers who worked at
Raytheon this summer, earning industry wages.
The business-education partnership
features a UA master’s degree program for full-time STEM – science,
technology, engineering and math –
teachers who are placed in industry in
the summer. Teachers gain experience
in workforce needs, which they take
back with them to the classroom.
Van Ert is earning a master’s degree
in teaching and teacher education from
the UA College of Education while
working throughout the school year at
TUSD as an instructional technologist
for language acquisition.
“How can we prepare kids for the
business world if we’ve never been
part of it? My experience at Raytheon
allows me to tell kids what the opportunities are,” said Van Ert, 35.
Hunter Rosen, a principal engineer
at Raytheon and Van Ert’s supervisor,
said the program benefits both education and industry.
“Tracie brings a tremendous benefit
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to our team – her creativity, problemsolving, looking at things from a different perspective,” Rosen said. “It’s
rewarding to know not only are we
getting a benefit but that Tracie and

Respect, Reward,
Invest in Teachers
It’s a tough time to be a teacher.
Roughly half a million U.S. teachers either move or leave the profession each
year, according to a report from the Alliance for Excellent Education, a turnover
that costs the nation’s school’s as much
as $2.2 billion a year.
The National Commission on Teaching
and America’s Future estimates that onethird of new teachers leave after three
years, and 46 percent are gone within
five years.
Tucson statistics are also concerning.
According to a 2013 survey of 1,417
Southern Arizona teachers conducted by
Strongpoint Marketing and sponsored
by Tucson Values Teachers:
• 27 percent report they are not likely to
be teaching in Southern Arizona five
years from now
• Nearly two-fifths are not likely to
recommend their profession to others
The goal of TVT, which is supported by
the business community, is to attract and
retain quality teachers.
“Business leaders realize the quality of
the teacher in the classroom is the single
most important factor in student achievement,” said Katie Rogerson, TVT’s interim executive director.
“Business leaders want to make sure
we value our teachers. Respect, reward
and investment in our teachers all goes
toward that.”

other teachers are taking their experience to their schools.”
Van Ert studied how efficient carbon
dioxide “snow” is in removing particulates without using harmful chemicals.
“It hits the surface with particles that
evaporate without leaving residue behind,” she said.
Remaining particulates fluoresce in
different colors, depending on their
size.
Based on her work this summer,
Van Ert was inspired to hold a competition among her students on creating
the most effective water filter, and Raytheon engineers will judge the results.
Van Ert got a firsthand look at the
collaboration, creativity and communication that take place at Raytheon.
“There is a wonderful cooperative
spirit here, and these are skills students
need,” she said. “I can take this back to
the classroom.”
Brian Anguiz, a 30-year-old math
teacher at Sahuarita Middle School,
spent this summer creating a template
to automatically track drawing changes for Raytheon’s Exoatmospheric Kill
Vehicle program. It required trial and
error, and learning high-level Excel
programs.
“What Brian is doing for us is creating a template that in the long run will
save the company money,” said Barbara Nichols, operations manager for the
EKV program. The EKV is designed
to defend the United States against intercontinental ballistic missiles.
“It will help engineers know what’s
going on at any given time,” Nichols
said.
Anguiz joined Teachers in Industry
for professional development credit.
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